Now we’re getting down to it. The rest of these folks haven’t tasted really bad beer. I’ll see your Stork and raise you a Stella. Not Stella Artois, the Belgian piss, but Egyptian Stella, which has things floating in it. Honest to god, we would hold the beer up to the light to see if we dared drink it. Small amounts of floaties meant “fuck it, hold your nose and drink”. Large amounts meant toss it out and open another. You couldn’t drink enough of this stuff to make it any better, either. I’ve drunk beer in most of Europe, east and west, and nothing came close to the horror of Stella.
Second worst was the beer they served in the military club in Da Nang, RVN. It was American beer in steel cans that had been sitting out on pallets in the blistering sun for months on end. Metallic, skunky, made your throat constrict almost to the point of not being able to swallow. I can’t recall the name, but it was an east coast brew. Cripes, that was bad stuff.
Belgian Lambic (sour) beer. Fermented by leaving it on open vats and hoping the yeast that falls into it outnumbers the spiders and flies. I like sour, I love beer, but this combination was utterly undrinkable - even free at the brewery.
I think it had more to do with the being violently ill the next morning. After drinking only a six-pack. Usually a six-pack of beer would hardly get me buzzed, let alone give me a hangover. The six Schaeffers gave me one of the worst hangovers of my life without even having the courtesy to get me drunk first.
Over here in Eastern Washington, “animal beer” usually referred specifically to Schmidt’s (can’t remember if that apostrophe-s belongs in the name), which I actually liked okay. I thought it was better than the ever-popular Rainier. I was always afraid to try Buckhorn. When I was a young teenager there was an old man on my paper route who lived in an utter shithole of an apartment, and he constantly had a can of Buckhorn in his hand. That pretty much labeled Buckhorn as “bottom of the barrel” for me.
In the early '70’s Lone Star Beer (NOT a good start) introduced a diet beer. I think it was called Light Lime, but am not certain since I purged it from memory.
To make up for its complete lack of any taste or body they added a lime flavoring. That one didn’t last very long. Come to think about it, Lone Star didn’t last very long after that.
A Belgian brew called ‘Malheur’. Had it at the Hopleaf in Chicago (is that place still there? Hell of a place) and the bartender advised me not to try it. Didn’t listen. It tasted like those cheap Hello Kitty erasers smell and is one of the very few beers in my life I have been unable to finish. The bartender even offered to knock it off my tab but I insisted on paying because I didn’t take his advice.
By 1995 the scene had improved dramatically. I’m pretty sure I had some Admiralteyskoe at one point or another, but Zhigulevskoe was definitely quite good. And then there was Baltika… oh God, their porter! Absolute favorite.
Do you mean a gueuze, which is what a lambic starts out as before they add the fruit? 'Cos that stuff is divine. Fat Tire was experimenting with a gueuze when I took their tour a couple of years ago and they handed out free samples; half the party couldn’t stand it, which meant more for me. I was quite pleasantly surprised when I first tasted it and the guide was impressed I knew what it was just by taste.
Lone Star is still around, and they even still make a light beer (without the lime flavoring though).
Interestingly I think there are more Texans outside Texas who drink the stuff than there are within Texas. It seems to be a way for Texas expats to assert their Texanness. But within Texas hardly anyone ever touches the stuff.
I’ve tried pretty much every crappy domestic lager out there, but Bud manages to capture a combination of tin cans and day-old steamed rice that really makes me gag.
I’ve tasted a few nigh-undrinkable microbrews, but they all at least get points for TRYING something and being INTERESTING.
Like mentioned earlier, Steel Reseve is an awful, awful beer. Somehow drinking it kills a person’s ability to talk right.
In college, the local liquor store had Brewski Beer one day (for cheap) and a bunch of us bought it for the novelty. It seemed OK, but then several months later I tried it again and the first sip tasted like an alluminum spike being driven through my temple. It didn’t get any better after that.
I’ve been a hasher since 1991 and I’ve been to places where the hashers are proud of the awful stuff they can find. I’ve had Fat Cat, Tuborg (I don’t know if it’s good in other places in Europe, but it was pretty bad in Turkey), Iron City, Old Mil, Milwaukee’s Beast, Old Style… The list goes on and on.
The best bad beer story I’ve heard though is from a guy who’s friend brought something labeled “carbonated, alcoholic, beer-flavored beverage” to a picnic. Evidentily, it couldn’t be called “beer” and it was so bad that people were fighting over cans of warm Strohs from the trunk of a car.
I’ll second Schlitz if it counts as beer. If not, then Tecate. Someone gave me some of that crap at our party in a hotel parking lot in Johnson City, but that’s a different story.
We used to have a Stroh’s brewery here in Longview. I’ve never noticed the stuff in any store.
I’m no beer connoseiur (sp?), but I know what I like. Dock St beer of Philadelphia tasted like the dust of the street itself, IMHO. I’m not sure if was meant to be a dark beer (which does not appeal to me) or what. But, this was NOT a pleasant experience!